There are many situations today in which a computing device, which may or may not communicate with other devices or entities, is used in a manner in which the device, or some portion or computing environment within the device, is “owned” by an individual, an organization or some other entity. The term “owned” may indicate that the device, or some portion or computing environment within it, may have been authenticated with an entity and/or the entity may thereafter have taken some form of control over the device or some portion of the device. One example of such a situation is in the wireless mobile communications industry, where a user of a wireless device (e.g., a mobile telephone) may subscribe to the services of a mobile communication network operator.
A problem in many computing contexts today, like the situation described above with mobile communications devices, is that the computing devices may be limited to being “owned” in the entirety of the device by a single entity. And in many cases, the ownership may be established at the time of purchase of a device by a user, preventing business models in which it may be desirable to establish ownership at a later time. Furthermore, these limitations prevent use of the devices in situations in which it may be desirable for multiple ownership of a number of mutually isolated portions of the device to exist, or for ownership to be transitioned to other entities from time to time. For example, in the case of a wireless mobile communication device (e.g., a mobile telephone) users may subscribe to the services of a particular mobile network operator at the time of purchase. Also, it may not be possible for such devices to provide access to multiple operator networks at one time. Updating or changing mobile network and service subscriptions may be difficult, and doing so over-the-air may not be possible.
Also, particularly in the context of wireless mobile communications devices, a computing device may include a Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) or Universal Integrated Circuit Card (UICC) that with which a user may subscribe to the services of a particular network operator. Unfortunately, this SIM/UICC mechanism may be limited to use with a single network operator. Additionally, while a SIM/UICC mechanism is generally considered to be highly secure, the security is not linked strongly to security properties of the whole device on which it resides. This limits the application of scaling security concepts for advanced services and applications such as mobile financial transactions. In particular, these shortcomings are relevant for autonomous devices, such as, machine-to-machine (M2M) communication devices.